Hollywood icon Tom Hanks has issued a cautionary message to his fans regarding an advertisement for a dental plan that purportedly utilized Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create a likeness of him. Hanks took to Instagram to inform his followers that the ad, although seemingly featuring him, is, in fact, a fake and was produced without his consent.
In the Instagram post, Hanks alerted his audience about the misleading video, stating, “BEWARE!! There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it.”
The accomplished actor has previously expressed concerns about the growing use of AI in the film and television industry. Nevertheless, Hanks has permitted filmmakers to digitally alter versions of himself in various films. For instance, the 2004 computer-animated Christmas fantasy film, The Polar Express, featured a CGI rendition of Hanks, and he underwent digital de-aging for scenes in the 2022 film, A Man Called Otto.
During a conversation with British comedian Adam Buxton on his podcast in mid-April, just prior to the commencement of the Hollywood writers’ strike, Hanks commented on AI, stating, “We saw this coming. We saw that there was going to be this ability to take zeros and ones inside a computer and turn it into a face and a character. Now that has only grown a billionfold since then, and we see it everywhere.”
He also mentioned ongoing discussions within industry guilds, agencies, and legal firms regarding the legal implications of actors’ faces and voices being treated as intellectual property. Hanks emphasized that AI and deepfake technology allow anyone to recreate themselves at any age, presenting potential challenges.
While the recent writers’ strike in the United States came to an end after the Writers Guild of America reached an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television regarding restrictions on AI usage in film and TV, the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA, remains on strike. This ongoing actors’ strike has delayed many production houses from resuming work, and it initially emerged due to concerns related to compensation and the unauthorized use of AI to generate likenesses of actors.
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